Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Anubis statue creates controversy

The Egyptian God Anubis was constructed last week at the airport to welcome the new King Tut Exhibit coming to the Denver Art Museum.

In early Egyptian history, Anubis was a god of the dead and a god of funerals.

This has created controversy among some residents and has a few of them, like Millie Lieberman of Denver, asking why this would be the piece that welcomes people to the city.

"The black on it represents the decaying body. To me it's a very sick and poor representation of what we're all about here in Denver," Lieberman said. "Why would they choose that, out of the whole King Tut collection, to welcome visitors and returning residents to our city?"

The Denver Art Museum stands behind its piece and says that is not what it is supposed to represent.

"There's absolutely a literal interpretation of what that figure represented in ancient Egypt, it's definitely not what its intended representation is in 2010, its just a piece of art to celebrate the King Tut Exhibit to the museum," Andrea Folton, director of communication at the Denver Art Museum, said.

If you look carefully, you can always find at least one person who would be upset with almost any piece of art on the face of the planet. The media seeks out conflict like this. Certainly this isn't the opinion of more than .00001% of the population of Denver.

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This blog was set up in 2004 to aggregate news about Egyptology and related topics from online sources on a regular basis. It was closed finally in September 2013 due to other commitments. It has been left open as an archive, but comments have been disabled.